Efficient, low environmental impact power generation is a critical need today. Whether because of high costs associated with fossil fuels, including their unavoidable environmental impact, or for other reasons, there has been a steady push in the past 30 years or so toward more environmentally friendly, i.e., greener, and, hopefully less costly, power generation. Indeed, this was a significant motivation behind the conception of the inventive technology disclosed herein. In providing an entirely sustainable, renewable energy source based, low visual impact, and localized power generation system, that outputs few or no environmental contaminants whatsoever, the inventive technology disclosed herein, in embodiments, meets most or all of many of the goals of an ideal power generation system—low or no environmentally harmful emissions, low visual impact, localized and easily movable, constructable, in large part, with many used components, sustainable, and consumptive of only renewable energy.
Agricultural businesses require electrical power for a variety of reasons—irrigation pumps, spraying systems, heating, etc. Often, farms have water channels—whether canals or other—through which water flows. Of course, flowing water, whether first impounded or not, can be harnessed to provide a desired power (whether electrical or otherwise). Indeed, windmills and hydroelectric plants have capitalized on this for quite some time. But there have been limited efforts—beyond traditional watermills—to harness energy from the water channels (including their drop structures through which typically moderately impounded water falls) for localized needs (e.g., the aforementioned power needs that are so common on a farm). Indeed, the inventive technology, in embodiments, involves the provision of power locally (i.e., such that resistive voltage drop does not become an issue), typically on the same farm or agricultural facility as the channeled water course providing the primary energy source. While the most readily amenable application for the inventive system may be a farm, the inventive technology may certainly find application elsewhere.
It is also of note that, in addition to the benefits of the use of a renewable source of energy to provide low or zero emission power via a low visual impact system, a related benefit may relate to the fact that the power generation system (or, more generally, hydraulic energy converter) may be local to (proximal) the renewable energy source (the flowing, perhaps falling water) and the rotational energy converting device (whether it be an electric power generator, a pump (whether water or otherwise), or a compressor, as but a few examples). Indeed, one motivator for the conception of the inventive technology acknowledged power needs on a farm and inquired as to what sort of renewable energy sources are commonly found on farms.